


Hold back the River

by littlemisscurious



Category: Actor RPF, British Actor RPF, Tom Hiddleston - Fandom
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Relationship Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-23
Updated: 2015-03-23
Packaged: 2018-03-19 08:11:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3602796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlemisscurious/pseuds/littlemisscurious





	Hold back the River

It was so loud around her. So unbearably, deafeningly, overwhelmingly noisy. The carpet, the lights, the smiling faces, it all became one blurry mix in front of her eyes and she felt the urge to turn around and run.

His hand was gentle around her waist, his fingertips, slightly calloused from playing the guitar the entire summer, tickled the skin through the cut-out part of her dress. He was beaming like a little boy, happy and proud to be back in the limelight, back with his friends, his colleagues, his heroes.

“You okay, love?”

She nodded with a half-hearted smile and he pretended to be too giddy, too excited to notice that she didn’t mean it.

They were lead further down the carpet, past the microphones and the ‘stars of the moment’ until they had to face the wall of light at the very end. Shouts and flashes seeped through her skin into her veins, making her blood go cold as she smiled and posed and cosied up to him.

How perfect she had become at pretending to be someone she wasn’t. He had taught her well indeed, had been the perfect, if unintentional, master over the months and years.

Another few steps to their left, another few smiles, her hand placed on his waist, his own pressing against the small of her back.

“This way please, Mr Hiddleston.”

A turn to their left and more photographers, quieter ones, who didn’t shout, didn’t command.

Then it was all over - for now.

***

Leaving his shoes by the door, he walked into the living room and, turning on the small lamp by the window, he poured himself a glass of Jameson. The golden liquid swirled around the glass - an heirloom from his father - shimmering like crystals under the summer sun, reminding him of his perfect summer of music.

Watching her reflection in the window in front of him, he wondered when exactly things had gone so terribly wrong between them. When had they stopped talking? When had they grown apart? Was it all those weeks ago? Or even way before?

She looked lost in her dazzling gown, her high heels, her diamonds. Swamped by the fabric, by the glamour, like a small child trying on her mother’s clothes that were too big, too grown-up, not belonging to the world she lived in.

“I’ll go to-”

“Yes, do.”

She nodded, not even surprised anymore that he did no longer want to listen to her excuses to go to bed.

Headaches, early mornings, long days, difficult clients - he knew them all by now, knew that they were all at least partly lies, invented excuses so she could go and be alone.

Not that she disliked him. They just didn’t have anything to talk about anymore, nothing they shared, nothing they both cared about. Not even themselves, the ‘we’ they had built up together only to leave it, discarded and forgotten, slightly broken though maybe not entirely beyond repair.

Her footsteps on the stairs were quiet and he listened to the wood creaking as she reached the fifth and then the ninth stair. It had made him sad in the past to hear those creaks, hear those vanishing footsteps, knowing that they’d be apart until he could join her upstairs at last. Now they made him breathe a sigh of relief and his face fell, his muscles at last allowed to relax, the smile that had been plastered to his face finally crawling away to join his shining dress shoes standing by the door.

Her shadow still lingered in the doorway behind him and he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the empty reflection in the living room window. He knew he should turn around, should take her shadow, drag it upstairs, reattach it to her body, make her whole again. But he couldn’t. Not when he wasn’t whole himself.

Who knew where he had lost his own. Maybe in Louisiana, maybe long before that.


End file.
